top of page
Search
  • Writer's pictureTommie

Tybalt here slain

Updated: Jun 10, 2020

Rage without purpose. Elevating an age-old resentment to further its spread. Anger for anger's sake; unfocused and misspent. That was the motivation and ultimately the fate of Tybalt in Romeo And Juliet.


If you're going to have rage over what's happening, make it a righteous rage. Give it purpose. Give it direction. And make it constructive.


My recent illness and its affect on my ability to do my job, in concert with my desire to just avoid the stressful pulse of information that is the national news of late, has conspired to make sure I've seen very little of the recent unrest. So I have little to say about it. Besides, from what I've seen others have said it and done so far better than I could do right now.


You can't avoid it, though, no matter what effort you make to do so. Nor should you. Nor should I.


Today I've finally been able to dive back into writing news, which is one of the parts of my job I'm actually physically capable of doing right now. I was shut down for most of the last week with pain, the effects of my medication, and a subsequent difficulty focusing on a screen for long periods of time.


Today it's everywhere.


There's no escape from what's going on. City after city -- including the one I live in -- with streets filled with people lending their voice to what's happening. And I feel myself stuck here in my house, unable to be a part of anything.


Literally unable to add my voice and speak up.


The one glaring truth that penetrates the darkness, though, seems to be that anger has many faces right now. There is anger about George Floyd. There is anger about the president. There is anger about face masks and haircuts and restaurants and concerts and on and on and on and on. It seems the only thing everyone on all sides of the myriad arguments can agree on right now is that they are angry.


That anger can only build and grow, which typically leads to only one outcome. Eventually the focus of our anger will expire, or as the Bard once wrote, "Tybalt here slain." But there's no clear answer to the question of what the passing of anger will bring. The star-crossed lovers didn't fare well after Tybalt's death. The world he and they occupied was forever stained by his stubborn will and reckless rage. The dominoes fell because they lacked the ability to avoid an inevitability.


You should be angry. We all should be angry. But we have to understand why, or it's all for nothing.


It's hard to imagine the world returning to a sense of what we had before, not without a serious injury from an unseen sword piercing our collective chest.



7 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page